500 arrests in net child porn sweep

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More than 500 people suspected of trading thousands of
pornographic images and videos of children over the internet have
been arrested in 12 countries in Europe and Latin America, Spanish
police said on Wednesday.

Nineteen arrests were made in Spain, with the remainder in
France, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Argentina, Chile, Costa
Rica, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Panama and Uruguay, said
Spanish police who co-ordinated the operation.

"We are going to continue to carry out this kind of operation
against child pornography in determined fashion as it is a disgrace
which democratic, free and decent societies cannot tolerate," said
Spanish Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso.

According to Spain's interior ministry, the police investigation
began in the northwestern city of Pontevedra in January and turned
up more than 20,000 items of child pornography accessed via an
internet chat room.

Police began monitoring visitors to the chat room and within a
fortnight had tracked some 900 connections to the website concerned
from around the globe.

Spain then liaised with police forces of the countries concerned
before staging the raids.

"Several meetings were organised during the operation involving
magistrates from all the countries concerned," a Spanish police
statement said.

The operation, one of the largest of its kind, was carried out
in conjunction with the Eurojust and IberRed law-enforcement
agencies, it said.

The Spanish arrests were nationwide, with several made in Madrid
and other major cities including Barcelona and Valencia.

Few details were immediately available as to how many people had
been detained in the other countries whose nationals were
involved.

Swedish police spokesman Linda Widmark said that "no one in
Sweden has been arrested," but explained Swedish criminal police
participated in planning the bust.

"There were indications that some people here were involved, but
it turned out that there was no longer reason to suspect them, and
no one was arrested," she said, adding she was unaware if any
Swedes had been arrested abroad.

The Dutch news agency ANP meanwhile quoted a Eurojust spokesman
as saying the network was not believed to involve many Dutch
nationals, noting it was mainly based on Latin America and
Spain.

According to Spanish police the operation was not directly
linked to previous swoops on pedophile rings in the country.

The interior ministry said a month ago that 18 suspected
pedophiles had been arrested in Spain amid evidence they filmed
their victims and swapped the images over the internet.